In my last post, I described a research project with Jim Hagemann Snabe, co-CEO of SAP, on the need for speed in information delivery. It turns out that executives believe not all information needs to be delivered faster, but substantial percentages of executives — a majority, in the case of some types of information — want their information more rapidly than they currently receive it.

How do we make information available more quickly? There are, of course, technical advances that can help with this problem. They include “in-memory” technology (SAP just announced some new capabilities in this regard), which means that information and systems are stored in memory, rather than on a hard drive, for quick retrieval and manipulation. Companies are also developing new forms of databases (e.g., those that store data in columns rather than rows) that allow faster data retrieval and analysis. Companies such as Intel are creating faster microprocessors in PCs and servers that have been created for the purpose of data analysis. There is also easy-to-use software that allows executives to do their own queries and analyses with a few clicks of a mouse. Read the rest of this entry »